Forum celebrates Broad Group's 30th and its sustainability

Acknowledging the 30th anniversary of China's Broad Group, Zhou Shanqing, commercial counselor of China's Consulate General in New York, called the privately held company one of the pioneers in establishing operations in the US.

"Broad came to the US 20 years ago, and in the process became a longtime bridge-builder between China and the US," he said at a celebration to mark the company's founding and sustainability in Princeton, New Jersey, on Saturday.

Zhang Yue, a former artist and now the company's chairman, started Broad Group with about $3,000 in 1988, mainly to make industrial air conditioners. Based in Changsha in Central China's Hunan province, Broad now has more than 3,000 employees and has products in more than 80 countries.

In 2012, the company shocked the world by completing a 30-story building in 15 days. Zhang has obtained more than 100 patents, and his inventions have transformed their respective industries, making Broad a green-technology leader in many fields.

The US operation, called Broad USA and headed by Sunny Wang, is based in Hackensack, New Jersey.

The company has a sustainable building products division that uses prefab components to reduce the volume of materials needed in construction, which are more energy-efficient than standard equivalents.

Broad also has an energy service unit that specializes in combined heat and power systems that generate electricity in a single, integrated system in which heat that is normally wasted in regular power generation is converted into useful energy.

Developing products and services that help the environment is central to Broad Group's mission, said Wang, who noted that the company's main campus in Changsha includes an organic farm.

"We are the number one taxpayer in China," he said at the Princeton event. "That reflects our philosophy that there are more responsibilities than just making a profit."

Others at the forum described how companies can utilize existing technologies to not only help the environment but the bottom line as well.

Chinese native Barry Zhang's Princetel Inc employs 70 people in a 50,000-square-foot facility in New Jersey that makes joints for fiber-optic cables.

"The average US building has annual utility costs of about $3 a square foot," he said. "Our utility costs average about 75 cents a square foot using existing technology."

Fred Arce is the superintendent for facilities engineering at Columbia University in New York. At the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, Arce said that changing from a pneumatic climate system to a digital system and implementing other energy-saving measures, the center has saved more than $8 million on utility costs the last 10 years.

Contact the writer at paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com